For World Bee Day, Grade 2 and 3 students at Winnipeg Beach School saw natural bees in action.
KATZ Farm, a local beekeeper or apiarist, visited the school on May 20 to talk with the Grade 2/3 class about World Bee Day. According to the United Nations, the purpose of World Bee Day is “to raise awareness on the importance of pollinators, the threats they face, and their contribution to sustainable development.”
Alex Zaboroski and his wife own KATZ Farm. The small-scale honey producers started about five years ago with just two colonies. That first year, they expanded to six colonies, but only one survived the winter. So he bought four nukes (small packages of bees), split those, and made more colonies, growing from there. Today, KATZ Farm has more than 50 colonies at a time.
Zaboroski’s son is in Winnipeg Beach School’s Grade 2/3 class. His teacher, Heida Johnson, thought bringing in his beekeeper parents to educate her students on bees would be perfect for the occasion. Though she wasn’t there for the presentation, she heard nothing but positive feedback from her students the next day.
KATZ Farm showed up with an observation hive full of bees for the students to examine. An observation hive is a plexiglass-enclosed hive that allows the bees to be examined without the possibility of them escaping or anyone being stung. Within it were baby bees hatching out of their cells right before the young children’s eyes, and Zaboroski said they loved seeing that.
Zaboroski and his wife taught the students about the structure of bee colonies and how they work: In a colony, everything revolves around the queen bee. She lays eggs — either female worker bees or male drones — and is always repopulating for the hive’s future. The worker bees (females), go out each day and collect nectar from flowers, then bring it back to the hive to be made into honey. The only job of the drones is to mate with the queen bee.
Then there are baby bees, who get a few jobs as they grow up. They can be guard bees, the first ones you see when approaching a hive. They can be janitor bees who clean the cells or nurse bees caring for the younger bees. Bees also make beeswax within the hive, which comes from glands on the younger bees that produce wax they then mould into a hexagon shape.
When the queen bee feels the hive is getting too full, she can signal the other bees to make a new queen, which they create by feeding a female larva royal jelly. Once the new queen is ready, she and half of the hive will fly off in a swarm to start their hive.
They also explained to the students how tiny bees affect the entire ecosystem.
“Explaining to them it’s not only us, the humans, that bees help but also that they play a larger role in the whole ecosystem,” said Zaboroski. “Not only do they provide honey and food and pollinate our plants, but they also support a lot of other insects, which then support a lot of animals and birds. Other things eat the birds, and it’s all part of the ecosystem. Everything works together in unison.”
Zaboroski and his wife also told the students about how pollination can increase farmers’ yields and enrich growing crops. Johnson said her students enjoyed the presentation from KATZ Farm.
“I think it’s always good to bring things from outside the school curriculum into the classroom,” she said. “I also thought since the students are so knowledgeable on bees, it’s a great way for him to highlight his personal life too.”
She added that a good chunk of the Grade 3 curriculum is on plants, so the bees presentation fit in well with that.
